Freaking Out

Exams in just a few days, but I can’t muster the energy to
freak out.  I’m barely studying.  Check out this first semester
1L!  Didn’t take long for the apathy to set in.

OK, not truly apathy.  I’m just a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of
student.  I studied everything as I went, outlined as I went, and I feel
pretty good about what I know.  I started practicing on old exams from the
first week of class.  I’m also not burdened by the need to be number one
in my class.  I do need that 3.0 to keep the money that my school has
generously given me, but I don’t find that a stressful GPA to maintain. 
Maybe when I get grades, this attitude will change.  Not to sound above
all of this, or better than my classmates, but I’m more worried about Jack’s
lack of vocabulary at 19 months than about impleader, sufficient concurrent causes,
mitigation, or the standard of due care (a little representative from each of
my first term classes for you!)

Last night, I put Jack to bed.  He is wonderful about bedtime and naptime
– we just tell him it’s time, read a book or two, and put him in wide
awake.  No tears, no fuss, he puts himself to sleep.  It’s
delightful.  Anyway, a little after I put him down last night, I went into my own
room to get on my pajamas.  Our rooms are connected by a door that doesn’t
shut, there is no doorknob (ahhh, renting).  I was quiet, but he was
apparently still awake, because I heard him say, softly and sweetly, Mom, is
that you?  What he really said sounded something like "shojjee guzz
mmmuh?"  But it was clear to me what he meant.  And that’s Jack
talking.  He talks to us all day long.  He has phrasing and
inflection and clauses.  He pauses for us to answer him.  Most of the
time, it’s pretty clear to me what he wants.  But none of it is
words.  It’s like he’s spent his babyhood with a bunch of Russians, and
now he’s speaking Russian to us Americans expecting us to understand him. 
He is developed in many other ways that the charts say he should be developed,
so he doesn’t seem to be cognitively delayed.  He just won’t say Mama or
Dada or anything but the occasional "dog", "teeth",
"fish", or "uh-oh."  I’m hoping before his next
appointment he explodes with words, so we don’t have to do any kind of early
intervention.  But as the days roll by and the words don’t come, I’m getting more and more anxious.  We talk to him all the time, with slow, exaggerated mouths – Bear, Jack.  Buh-ayre, bear.  Can you say bear?  Buh buh buh?  Buh-ayre?  And he just looks at us like we’re loony and says "Djuh do?  Do mefuh."  "What are you guys doing?  Talk normal."

Sometimes I get a little angry with him, for not getting it.  For not responding to me, for making me feel like a poor teacher.  I don’t want to be that mother, the nightmare stage mother who wants her kids to be the best, because they are a reflection of her best self and she doesn’t want to look like a failure.  He is a reflection of my best self, and I’m proud of him.  In a few months, he’ll probably be talking up a storm, and I’ll forget this anxiety.  And if he’s not, we’ll help him til he is.

Due to a hot water heater malfunction, he went without a bath two nights in a
row, so this morning I put him in the shower with me.  He won’t stand in
the shower on his own, it’s too scary, so I have to hold the slippery little
thing.  He clung to me, head on my
shoulder, and lay quietly as the water hit his back.  He loves it.  I do, too.  It’s so peaceful and sweet.  I have a delightful son.  I’ll take exams in a couple of days, and English will finally click for him in a couple of —-, and everything will march along in the way that it should.